Excerpt of Morning Star by Kris Jayne

Five Years Ago

Anthony

“Happy birthday, Anthony Star-Hunter,” she said, pronouncing my name with drama. “That’s quite the mouthful. Like you’re the commander of a spaceship.”

Her nose crinkled adorably—if judgementally.

“My mother couldn’t let her children forget we were Stars.”

“Pun intended?” Sarah snorted again, louder this time.

I laughed. “Not so much. She’s not full of praise. Just family pride.”

“And your father?”

I flinched. “Also proud. We settle the dispute with a hyphen, but secretly, I think Dad finds it emasculating.”

Sarah’s eyes went wide at my familial confession. She tugged her light cardigan closed and looked away in search of her ride. Several yards away, Catie flitted around the food table.

“What’s your father like? Other than married to Catie’s mother for seven years.”

“You haven’t met him?” she dodged.

“I’ve only been seeing Catie for two or three weeks.”

Catie gushed about Edward. She adored him, and much like she didn’t call Sarah her stepsister, she referred to him as “Dad” or, occasionally, “Dad 2.0.”

“Catie loves him. I gather she didn’t have a great relationship with her biological father.”

Sarah’s eyes softened. “She didn’t.”

“And?”

Sarah certainly wasn’t chatty.

“And Dad stepped in. She was seven when he started seeing her mom.”

I did the math. “Seven or eight years is a long wait to get hitched.”

Her mouth puckered. “Divorces can take time—especially the expensive ones.”

“Ah, those boring details Catie wanted to skip.”

“Exactly.”

“So why come? She obviously gets on your nerves. And whatever she told you about me didn’t impress you. Now that you’re here, you don’t appear to have changed your mind.”

Sarah chewed at the edge of her full bottom lip.

“Catie’s a lot of things. Some of them annoy me, but she’s right. I need to get out more, and it is my birthday.”

She spat the last word.

“You don’t like your birthday?” I asked.

Her face shadowed so darkly, I winced. Her brows shifted high and low as she weighed how to respond in the face of something deeply awful.

“Never mind,” I said.

Her sadness wouldn’t do. It pierced my chest with indescribable sharpness. I tightened a fist to keep from smoothing her forehead with my fingertips and stroking her cheek until it lifted back into proper position with her probably rare, but gorgeous, smile. The compulsion to make her feel better unsettled me.

“My worst birthday was when I was thirteen. I begged my dad to take me and my friends for a shooting weekend in Arkansas.”

She recoiled. “A shooting weekend? What’s that?” 

“Hunting. Or, more accurately, firing rifles off in the country. I was born in Texas. My dad grew up hunting in Arkansas, and no, that’s not how we got our name.” I squinted and laughed. “Or maybe it was back in the British isles centuries ago.”

One corner of Sarah’s lips curved up a millimeter. Her hard-won amusement was enough of a victory for me to continue.

“So he took me and a few of my buddies, along with their dads, up to his friend’s cabin near Hot Springs.”

Hank Milani and Dad had grown up together. He lent us the cabin for the weekend. That was back before everything between our families blew up.

“Dad’s friend Marty was drunk. Dad was hammered. I’d never seen him like that. All the other boys caught fish. Michael, Marty’s son, caught five, but I horsed around and mostly swam. When I came back with no fish, Dad looked at me and said, ‘Figures. You think everything should come easy. Just like your slut mother. Worst part is that it will. Might as well drop the Hunter. You don’t need it, and you sure as shit don’t deserve it.’”

“All of that over fucking fish?” 

Sarah’s husky voice pitched high. She reached out and gripped my forearm. I tensed at first, then relaxed. Indignation flexed her jaw. Tiny as she was, her body coiled as if poised to go find Dad and knock him the fuck out. Her protectiveness sparked warm relief in my gut, displacing the nostalgic pain that usually lived there.

I hated that feeling and tried to minimize it. What was I supposed to do? My father was my father. It wasn’t like I was getting another one.